In early May 1990, just before the traditional 9 May Victory Day celebrations marking the 45th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Komsomol′skaya pravda published a lengthy interview with the Soviet historian Gennadii Bordyugov, under the title ‘The Stolen Victory’. In it Bordyugov advanced the idea that, far from the Stalinist government and the Soviet people having forged an unbreakable unity to defeat the Nazi aggressors, there were serious conflicts and divergences between them. Basing his argument on recently uncovered documents which attested to significant popular discontent both during and after the war, he argued that what he called ‘the people’ and the Stalinist regime had fought the war with different sets of objectives. The people's aim had been the liberation of their country, and having accomplished that goal they believed that they would be able to create a freer (if not totally free) society. In part they were reacting against what they saw as the incompetence of the national government in the early days of the war, and the open corruption of local officials throughout its duration; in part they based their expectations on various relaxations in regime policy which Stalin had introduced in order to forge a stronger national unity, and which they believed would continue. Stalin and the leadership, however, had other war aims, namely the survival of their system of power.